Pakistani anti-polio official’s son ‘abducted’

Islamabad, Oct 14: A 12-year-old son of a woman official, working with the polio virus eradication programme in Pakistan, has reportedly been “abducted” after he went out to the market and never returned home.

The three-day nationwide polio vaccination campaign is set to begin Oct 15, and officials in the port city of Karachi have threatened to boycott all activities if the boy was not recovered soon, Dawn News reported.

About 2.3 million children up to five years of age will be covered across the city during the immunisation days. Under the campaign, 52 area heads were selected to oversee the field work by 277 teams.

Asifa Asad, the mother of the missing boy and who works at a government dispensary in Gulberg Town area, said her son Zainul Abideen had gone out to purchase bread Friday evening, but never returned home. Police has so far failed to track him.

The woman linked the “abduction” of her son to her association with the polio campaign.

She said that since she took over as area supervisor a couple of months back, she had been warned against such activities, “as these have ulterior motives” of some “foreign intelligence agencies”.

Asad said she had been living peacefully for the past many years, but started running into trouble after she was assigned the role of area supervisor.